


Deodand

by LucyLovecraft



Category: Fire in the Steppe, Pan Wołodyjowski, Pan Wołodyjowski | Fire in the Steppe, Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Because of Reasons, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, I reject your reality and substitute my own, M/M, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, OT3, Out of Character, Retcon, The Author Killed Sienkiewicz In An Honourable Duel, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-26 20:11:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18185195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyLovecraft/pseuds/LucyLovecraft
Summary: There is a story which has been told of Azja, son of Toğay Bey. This is not that story.





	Deodand

**Author's Note:**

> In which yours truly wrests the character of Azja from Sienkiewicz's grasp and tries to pretend half the book did not in fact happen. I did more work on trying to pin down Crimean Tatar for this fic than was even remotely sane. It's probably all wrong, but by God I tried.
> 
> Fic title from [a charming, antiquated English word](https://www.wordnik.com/words/deodand).
> 
> Me@Sienkiewicz: fuck u, u racist jerk

There are words that are said to be mine that I do not remember.

_“And you have a daughter, for whose sake you gave command to flog me to death; and this daughter I will give now to the last of the horde, so that he may have service and pleasure from her.”_

I do not remember this. _Min añlamim—_ I do not understand any of it! I have been a man like other men; sometimes worse. But I do not remember that I was a monster.

_“Have you not seen that I love only you? Ah, but I have suffered my share! I will take you now! You are mine, and you will be mine! No one will tear you from my hands in this place—you are mine, mine, mine!”_

_Tuqtagız!_ For God’s sake, let this stop!

What is it about who I am that has made this the story that could be told of me?

And the story ends: a stake under the open sky.

That’s not how it was.

 

That’s not how it is.

 

I never saw such things. Such horrors are not mine.

I have seen horrors, but I have seen miracles, too. I have seen the gold in their hair set all the treasures of the world to shame.

I used to believe that my heart was greater than that of any thousand men, and my suffering proportionate. I thought I should exact suffering on a thousand men, thousand men so that their suffering would equal and ease my own. I still think so, some days, because God did not make my blood for gentle thoughts. Yet neither did He make me such a man as could relinquish anything he held dear, once he has made it his own. From my first day of freedom I swore never to let any will but my own and God’s dictate how I live in this world. I am not my blood alone and I have chosen what I hold dear: a small paradise built of two hearts instead of the desolation I would have made for myself.

I have lied often, because it was necessary. But I do not lie now: I swear to you that it was not like what you have heard.

Did I hate? Of course I hated. They taught me to hate, but hatred flourished in me as a gift inborn. What was kindness but the absence of a blow, or a kick? Or—most often—a blow deferred?

 _Look what you made me do._ I lived long enough to say those words myself.

When the colonel defended me, I did not imagine he had any kindness for me. Why should he?

But I did not hate him, and that was strange.

I could look at his face in the firelight, at the gold and silver of his hair, and I did not hate him.

And she—oh, she breathed meaning into that word, "kindness". I had never met anyone like her. Brave and daring as a khan’s queen, my golden bird. I wanted her. Of course I did. Other men have said this, and they said it truly when they said I wanted her.

 

How others have spoken of what came after… I cannot pretend I do not know. It is not true. It never was.

 

_Azja, what are you doing?_

She is asking me this, even as I write.

_I am writing my story, güzelim. I am trying to write, my beautiful one._

She tells me the sun is shining, and that she wishes to go for a ride before the day grows too warm. I try to tell her that this is important. She sighs, and frowns at me with love sparkling in her eyes. I am told I am a gloomy man, and she says it so I know that she loves me.

_What are you two doing?_

And I had never thought to love any man who could wear titles or carry such fame as he does.

He slips his arms around her waist, sweet as she is, good as he is, and they smile at me.

How can I stay?

I leave this work for a time.

 

I am not tall. I am not broad and handsome like a man raised on good meat and cheese every day of his life, for I have not been such a man. I am too lean, and they mislike me and say I look like a wolf.

 _Happily_ , I thought, once. _Happily will I be such to you, and to all your Commonwealth, all of you bleating out your pedigrees and seeing me as worse than I am._

He never saw me as better than I was, though at first I resented that, too. He saw me as I was, and would most men not hate another for seeing them so clearly? We need lies. Lies had kept me safe.

 _You're a fine officer,_  he said.

Patronising, I thought. How little I knew him. Forgive me, _kaderlem_ , my dear one, because I had neither a heart like yours nor like hers.

In those days, I thought I was to be one more soldier you two took to bed. I still went, with a storm beneath my breastbone.

I wanted it, but I hated you for inviting, instead of offering. Do you understand? I hated how much I wanted to go with you then, when I wanted you to come with me. I had no power, and I hated to yield to what seemed your will rather than mine.

Hatred can keep you alive, but only through love can one live. I did not know that yet. But even then, thank God, some part of me wanted to know it.

 

Basia, you looked up at me, alight and alive, bright-eyed and brimming as though you had never doubted yourself in your life—as though you neither questioned who you were or doubted what you would be.

“Pan Bogush says that you are a great man; but I think that the greatest man cannot avoid love.”

A bowed head might have hidden my face from others, but you looked right into my eyes, and I had to close them lest you see straight into my heart.

“Your grace is right.”

“I see that you are a man with a heart.” No one had ever seen as much. I had not known I was such. How did you? “More than one bears in his heart hidden love, and does not dare to speak of it to any one; but if he would confess his love sincerely, perhaps he might learn something good.”

Nothing in my life could have prepared me for that moment, beloved. Hope struck me like lightning, and I blazed with it so that my soul caught fire.

“Of what does your grace wish to speak?”

“Another would be hasty with you,” she told me, “since women are impatient, and not deliberate; but I am not of that kind. As to helping, I would help you willingly, but I do not ask your confidence in a moment; I only say this to you: Do not hide; come to me even daily. I have spoken of this matter with my husband already; you will come to know and see my good-will, and you will know that I do not ask through mere curiosity, but from sympathy, and because if I am to assist, I must be certain that you are in love. Besides, it is proper that you show it first; when you acknowledge it to me, perhaps I can tell you something.”

 

You have heard this, but that was the first day. That was the first time. I did as she asked. Here, I think, things depart from what you have been told. Often we met after that, and we would speak together. That was all.

 

Later, she said: “My husband and I have a great liking for you, Azja. Dine with us again. You see that I do not ask for myself. I should hardly do such a thing!”

_My little golden bird, how your eyes sparkled._

“No,” she continued, still laughing, “I ask for two. I do think you are in love with me”— _She knows, and she does not hate me!—_ “but I should like you to be in love with Michał. Are you so? I think you are, from how you speak of him.”

Love him? My God, was that what this feeling was?

_“The proofs of your virtue are so evident that a blind man could not deny them," he had said. How did the regard in his eyes count for more than any other man’s? “Continue the affair with Krychinski. You will have no hindrance in this, but aid, in proof of which I give you my hand as to an honorable cavalier. Come to sup with me this evening.”_

_He gave me his hand, and I bowed over it again and in that moment I swear I do not know what I felt because it was not hatred._

“Do you ask if I esteem your husband as… as I might  esteem you, your grace?”

“Exactly!” She clapped her hands as if I had guessed a riddle. “Well, do you you?”

Basia leaned closer, looking directly up into my face. I had tried to bow my head, but she would not let me hide my eyes. She never does. And she was so close that I could see the freckles the Steppe sun had scattered over her cheek.

“How do you know these things?” I asked. I think I could have wept, were I a weaker man. I had no secrets in that moment, and secrets had been my sanctuary.

“I didn’t. I guessed!” Perhaps that explained it. Sometimes I think she wanted it to be so, and made the truth with wishing. “Michał said… well, it doesn’t matter who you reminded him of. But at that dinner you kept looking at us both so I could hardly think of my food!”

Do you know how many human souls had brought me to my feet before that moment, Basia? How many I had knelt to and _meant_ it? No man or woman on earth could have made that claim.

I lost control. That, too, was new. I had never meant to share any kind of truth with you. I had heard what they said: how now and again, the colonel and his wife might show favour to a particular comrade. To a comrade, only. The rumours had never said anything of men who had no title.

Did I care? Of course I cared. If I lacked a title, was this not then a summons?

But do you know how much I wanted you both? I lay down my pride at your feet, when for years it was all I’d had.

“I give my soul into the hands of your grace; I give my faith into the hands of your grace. I do not wish to do anything except what you command me; I do not wish to know any other will. Do with me what you like.” And then I spoke far, far more of my truth than I had ever uttered aloud. I saw his eyes. I saw her smile. Seeing both, I said, “I live in torment and suffering; I am unhappy. Have compassion on me; if not, I shall perish and be lost.”

She laughed like sunlight on water: “Do not perish! Do not be lost! Come to dinner tonight, and we shall make you forget whatever troubles you.”

Then Basia took my hand in hers. I had never before given thought to my hands, one way or another. But my hand seemed strange and gangling when she pressed it between her own. She had a swordswoman’s callouses on her small hands and her skin was golden from the sun.

“Come to dinner,” she said. “If you do, I shall let you call me Basia.”

Bending, she kissed my hand like any cavalier. Then, with a smile, she was gone again.

How can I say how I spent the rest of that day? I dreamed those hours away in a fever until the hour itself came. Until that last instant I was sure pride would prevail and I would not go, but it failed me as it never had before.

All day, I heard the words of a song I had once heard, repeating over and over in my mind:

 

_Bäxet kilsä, bügen kil-sen._

  
_If happiness comes, let it come today._

 

When one lives long in the dark, light becomes an agony.

“My wife convinced you to join us, I see,” the colonel said, taking her hand.

I bowed.

“Did she in fact say why she wanted to bring you here? Other than the honour of having you as our guest for dinner?”

“Of course I did!” Basia cried, then blushed. “Perhaps not… not outright. But we understood each other, didn’t we?”

“I hope so,” I said, with all the truth I’d ever possessed.

“Well, it does fall to cooler heads to say what should be said clearly, as between two soldiers: would you come to bed with my wife and I?” There could never be words for what strains were put upon my will in that moment. “We thought—we hoped you would not take it amiss, if we were to ask. And I know you will not do me the dishonour of even thinking that saying ‘no’ could change anything between us.”

To this day, I do not know if he understood what his words meant—how a world ended and was reborn in the space between his breaths.

“I believe you.” It was true.

I had never seen Wolodyjowski’s eyes like that: the fine lines that deepening around his eyes as he smiled a true, deep smile. _Yöräkniñ_ , my heart, I had not imagined that you could smile at me like that.

“Then call me Michał,” he said. “If this—if this is what you truly want. But tell me: do you wish this?”

“I do.” My voice did not waver, but to admit so much shook the foundations of my soul. He saw it. He looked up into my face, and he held out his hand, as he had before, in friendship.

When I took it, I think he must have guided me in as though it were a dance. Or maybe some greater, kinder power impelled my feet. But I was bending to him even before Basia curled her arm about my shoulder to pull me down to meet her husband’s mouth.

I had never been kissed like that before: eager yet unhurried, as if moment by moment he were testing how I might react. He was a swordsman, even in this.

Her arms encircled my waist, and she slipped between her husband and myself as neatly as if we’d all done this a hundred times.

She put her hand to my sash, and reality fell away under my feet.

“Michał,” she said, her voice teasing as I’d heard it many times before—but never quite like this. “ _Michał_ , you’re not sharing.”

I must have gasped, because he deepened the kiss as my mouth opened.

Her hands found bare skin before his did, and when I looked down in shock she rose up on her toes to kiss me.

 

_Azja? You are writing in the dark._

I had not noticed until he came in, bringing the light with him.

Now his hair is more of silver than it was then, but the candlelight makes him golden again.

 _Is it still our story you’re writing?_ he asks, not because he does not know, but so that I should know he would listen if I wish to speak of it.

Yes, I say. That first night.

 _Ah._ He smiles, and I see his moustache twitch. _That was worth writing about._

They both have this way of speaking as if it were all a game. I cannot say how much I love them for it. They are my golden suns— _küneşlerniñ_. Pan Zagłoba says I am saturnine. I say he is a sot. He also says Michał only took a shine to me because of that Cossack. But the old ass may bray all he likes. I do not need to rip his throat out as he deserves. I can sleep with Michał’s heart beating beneath me, and with Basia curled against us like a cat. She smiles in her sleep. I could not have imagined such things.

Sometimes I wonder what comes of all Pan Zagłoba’s stories. I wonder where they come from, and where they go in the world. I do not like stories such as his. I have used lies, but I take no joy in them.

 _Come to bed, Azja,_ Michał tells me. _The children are asleep, and Basia sent me to find you._

I like better the truth I have lived.

Perhaps _you_ believe none of this. Perhaps I have wasted my time. Perhaps no one will ever read this.

Yet, if somehow my words endure: _Min sine yaratam_ , my loves. And I always will.


End file.
